At a time when ever more information is available about the quality of health care, the challenge for policy makers is to better understand the policies and approaches that sit behind the numbers. Korea is the first country report in a new OECD series evaluating the quality of health care across OECD countries – whether care is safe, effective and responsive to patients’ needs. OECD Reviews of Health Care Quality examine what works and what does not work, both to benchmark the efforts of countries and to provide advice on reforms to improve quality of health care. This series of individual country reviews will be followed by a final summary report on the lessons learnt for good policy practices.